Megan Jacobson's Blog

I wrote a picture book! Isn’t this cover by Beck Feiner just gorgeous?

Two and a half years ago I had a baby, and the love I felt when I first held her was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. There were no words in all of the dictionaries in all of the languages that could describe the love, but I wanted to at least try. One sleepless, heart-bursting, fog-headed evening as I watched my daughter drift off to sleep, I started to get an image in my head. It started micro, then expanded to the world, the solar system, and then the universe, and then it enveloped even that. It was this shining ball of love that was bigger than anything known in our physical existence. I couldn’t stop thinking of it – I wanted to put this image into words, to explain to my sleeping baby just how much I loved her. This is where the genesis of BIG LOVE was born.

She was still tiny then, so I was singing a lot of lullabies. I realised that even though my daughter didn’t know language yet, she knew that when I sung to her, it meant I loved her. So I wanted the words of BIG LOVE to reflect that rock-a-bye, lullaby lilt. I tried to make the words knock against each other in a sing-song way, like a lullaby does, so that even if my daughter didn’t know yet what I was saying, the sounds of the book would be soaked in love.

I sent the manuscript off to my agent, who loved it and sent it off to Beck Feiner, who she thought would be a good fit for my words. It is incredible how Beck took my words and added texture and humour and her own stylish, special life to it. I’m so lucky to have her beautiful artwork adorn my words, and we’re both so lucky to have the book be published by Walker Studio in early November. I love Big Love, and I hope you do too.

Big love to you and yours,

xx m

I did a podcast! Normally I get so flustered doing interviews that I forget how words work, but Dani from Words and Nerds was so friendly that I forgot to be nervous. We get pretty deep, chatting about our own experiences in abusive relationships, so be mindful if that’s something that may trigger you.

Here’s the chat on Soundcloud:

And here’s the podcast on iTunes:

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/words-and-nerds-authors-books-and-literature/id1303440513?mt=2

x m

 I’ve recently watched the Netflix series ‘The End of the F**** World’, and I loved it. I loved it for its writing, the acting, it’s Wes Anderson-esque cinematography, but mostly because it dared to show a teen female protagonist who was spiky, angry, sweary and complex. Alyssa behaves in a way that isn’t traditionally ‘nice’ and in way that is too often dismissed as ‘unlikeable’ – especially in YA. And I hate that term ‘unlikeable’. Because I liked Alyssa very much, even before she ‘redeemed’ herself by letting her guard down. 

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Writer and agent Danielle Binks expressed it best when she tweeted “YA observation: I am always a little … disappointed when I read low-star reviews, that cite a female protagonist being unlikeable and her actions immoral as the reasons for hating the whole book.””I often think it’s an echo of a society that thinks women have to be “nice” and uncomplicated, all smooth-edges and purity. But that’s not necessarily interesting. It’s certainly not where conflict lies.” “So I’m especially concerned when young female teen characters are chastised for their imperfections too. For not being 100% likeable for all 350 pages or so – really, they’re “marked down” for making mistakes, fucking up and being messy and just HUMAN.”

Can I have a HELL YEAH?

I get how people sometimes don’t like certain types of people. I for one, can’t stand people who can’t make decisions. Just pick a damned ice cream flavour, Linda! Dave, do you really have to make a pros and cons spreadsheet when deciding where to holiday? Just pick one!

However, even though I don’t personally gel with that personality type, some people do, and so I wouldn’t automatically label every single person who acted like that as ‘unlikeable’. They’re just people I wouldn’t personally choose to be my BFF because we’d drive each other bonkers. And that distinction is important. Because when you’re labelling a whole set of personality types that make up a person’s nature as ‘unlikeable’, you’re saying to readers who might resonate with that character that nobody is ever able to like them. That they are innately flawed. And I think that’s problematic.

But, first and foremost, why do protagonists need to be ‘likeable’, and especially female protagonists? Author Claire Messed expressed it best when her interviewer described her female protagonist as ‘unbearably grim’, and ‘isn’t Messud concerned that the protagonist isn’t someone the reader wants to be friends with?’ Messud responded: 

“For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.” 

I feel like the depictions of girls and women are constantly constrained by the societal expectations of being ‘likeable’ in ways male protagonist just aren’t. When male characters expose their flaws they’re seen as ‘complex’ whereas female characters are seen as ‘unlikeable’ or at worst ‘bitchy’ and I’d really like to think we’ve gone beyond that. Holden Caulfield isn’t ‘likeable’ but gosh he’s interesting. Why can’t female characters be judged by the same standards? 

Girls should be allowed to express anger, because females feel anger just as much as males. Girls should be allowed to react to traumatic experiences in ways that aren’t what society deems as ‘nice’. Sometimes girls have tough exteriors. Sometimes girls are sarcastic. These are all valid ways to be. It’s how humans react.  

I hate the way girls are straight-jacketed by societal expectations of how they should behave. Boys are allowed to act out, you understand why boys sometimes act out, but girls aren’t often given that same freedom or forgiveness. My character Ily in my book ‘The Build-Up Season’ has a defensive shield, she uses thorny words and doesn’t let anyone close, but I think she’s likeable, because despite not acting in a ‘nice’ or in a traditionally ‘feminine’ way – if you just judged her by her actions, nearly every choice she makes is defined by her need to help somebody else. She portrays herself as someone who doesn’t give a damn about anyone, but that’s her defence mechanism, and her actions speak otherwise.

I based her character on my favourite protagonist, Rick Blaine from Casablanca. He’s abrasive and he has walls and he tells the world ‘I stick my neck out for nobody’ – but through his actions you see he actually does stick his neck out, on multiple occasions. Nobody defines him as ‘unlilkeable,’ and as much as I hate to believe it, I think he gets away with it because his character is male. It would have been easy to make Ily sweet and understanding and ‘likeable’, but she was raised in an abusive household. There is so much trauma there, and maybe Ily isn’t ‘likeable’ but I’d like to think her reactions are understandable, and that’s the most important thing.  

Much in the same way it’s problematic for white, middle class audiences to only seek out protagonists who have the same skin colour or cultural or socio-economic background as themselves, I also think it’s problematic for audiences to expect characters to react in the same ways that they themselves might react, with their own temperaments which are coloured by their own personal upbringing or their own frames of references. The beauty in storytelling is that you’re able to gain insight into personalities and experiences that aren’t your own, and through stories you’re able to gain empathy and understanding. Ily is so unlike me, I wouldn’t behave in the way she behaves, but maybe, if I was raised in the environment she was raised in, I would.  

I’ve had a few people write me to tell me that they saw so much of themselves in Ily, and that they felt the same anger and hurt that she felt, and she really resonated with them. I totally get that some people might not connect with her, that they might even hate her. And that’s cool! I love Snape, but I get why people might hate him #slytherinpride. But the term ‘unlikeable’ is really problematic, because you’re saying to those people who saw themselves in Ily, and characters like Ily – girls with anger and flaws and messy, human complexities, that they’re unlikeable too.

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I’d really like to change the language around the way we speak about female protagonists. Yeah, lots of people don’t like lots of characters. And that’s ok! That’s more than ok! The world is a wonderful and diverse place and I LOVE THAT. But maybe, instead of saying a female character is ‘unlikeable’, just say ‘I, personally, didn’t like them’.

Because language affects the way people see themselves. Language can make girls feel like they have to hide parts of themselves, to hide their anger or their flaws, because those female characters that might resonate with those parts of themselves are described as ‘unlikeable’. It’s saying to impressionable girls who have normal human emotions and flaws that they’re fundamentally, innately, unable to be liked.. and that’s something I don’t like. At all.

I just found a couple of poems I wrote in my very early twenties. I haven’t written poetry in years, but I’ve always loved it. I read it, and I try to put a little poetry into the way I write my prose whenever I can.

Much of my poetry was about unrequited love, or horrible relationships, all of which I sort of grew out of with age, due to the sort of self love, respect, and confidence that happens with age, and so my poetry stopped.

I just re-discovered these though, and I quite liked them, so I thought I’d publish them here so they have a little bit of life outside me.

So, here it is, my early twenties poetry¯\_(ツ)_/¯ –

On the Riverbank

Will I hear your soft words in these rising bubbles?

Too dry, I’m left as you search for Neptune’s daughters.

Except for the drowned girl (that poor drowned girl)

Nobody knows the depth of those waters.

Not trusting your lungs to hold so long, I call out to the fish.

Fish, I say, fish, tell my love I wait for him to rise,

Tell him I know how it feels to drown, I do it everyday. There is too much depth to his eyes.

They gape at me, as fish do, and they reply,

You are fair, but you are parched, and you are not as lovely as the daughters of our king.

Nay, I say, but I love him more than any cold blood could, and in those green depths, I ask you this, how could love sing?

Now they come to stare, those amphibious creatures that crawl on the bank,

And I wait for you forever more.

For no lungs could hold so long, I know this as I breathe hot breaths,

And I wait as your empty ribcage barnacles on the river floor.

If I were a flower I’d be a Venus flytrap,

All bell-shaped and bitey,

And I’d shut my mouth around your fingertip.

Thinking I could catch you like a fly.

If I were a flower I’d be a wet-the-bed daffodil.

Being improper,

Dancing on your grave.

Befriending the worms that ate you up.

If I were a flower I’d be a nine-day-old lily,

Tossing pollen like it’s our wedding confetti,

Staining your things and killing your cat.

Oh Narcissus,

If I were a flower like you.

(Fun fact! Lily pollen is poisonous to cats. Also I was a tad obsessed with Greek mythology, so that’s the Narcissus reference. For those that aren’t across it, Narcissus was the tale of a man who fell so in love with his own reflection in a pond that he refused to leave, not even to eat or drink. He eventually withered away and died of thirst by the waters edge, transfixed by his own image, and he turned into the Narcissus flower.  I’m still completely in love with ancient mythology to be honest.)

Quite often I cannibalise imagery from old poetry for my stories, or take lines from old stories that don’t work, and put them into new ones. Does anyone else do that? Or do you respect the independence of the original work?

x m

The week before The Build-Up Season came out I was involved in a The Build-Up Season Blog Tour. Five bookish bloggers let me feature on their pretty pages to answer Q & As, their questions were considered and thoughtful, and I tried to answer them as best I could while also rambling about my extensive prank war experience, crocodiles, relationships and all things Darwin (again, more crocodiles). Here are the links to The Blog Tour pages, but do poke around and check out the rest of their blogs too, because they’re great, and much fancier and prettier than mine (updated much more regularly too). Here they are –

Mollie at Mollie the Reader

Gabby at Always and Forever Reading

Anisha at Sprinkled Pages

Jeann at Happy Indulgence Books

Sarah at Written Words Worlds

Speaking of blog reviews, I was also lucky enough to get reviewed by Readings –

https://www.readings.com.au/review/the-build-up-season-by-megan-jacobson

Also, Books and Publishing –

https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2017/05/31/90823/the-build-up-season-megan-jacobson-penguin/

And The Build-Up Season featured as the Angus & Robertson Bookworld’s Staff Pick for August! (Cue happy dance. NB my happy dance sort of resembles a cross between the way Elaine from Seinfeld dances and a baby giraffe trying to run for the first time. That’s what all my attempts at dancing look like, really)

http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/promotions/staff-picks/staff-picks—young-adult/c/staff-picks-young-adult

On top of those who wield keyboards so beautifully, there are the Youtubers, those brave articulate souls who don’t freeze and eye-twitch in front of the camera like some of us (by us, I mean me. Obviously.) Look at these dear faces! Hear their lack of stutter! Admire their editing skills! I give these guys all the gold stars and want to rain thanks all over their dear heads.

I’m always so grateful that people who aren’t my mum and dad are even reading my words, and I’m beyond grateful that people like the ones above spend their own time reviewing books and spreading their opinions among the bookish community.

The reviews I’ve linked above are nice ones (thanks!) but honestly I’m so happy that bloggers exist at all, in any capacity, and I’m appreciative whether the reviews are good, bad or otherwise, because honesty is important and I totally get if a certain story doesn’t float someone’s particular boat. The world would be a very boring place if we all liked the same thing.

(However anyone who doesn’t agree that breakfast cake is a perfectly valid breakfast food is not someone whose opinions I can support. Cake for breakfast is always a glorious thing. Always. Eggs and cereal be damned.)

x M

Music played a huge part in writing The Build-Up Season and in getting to know Ily, so she totally deserves a mix tape. Underneath Ily’s coat of amour, all adorned with spikes and razor wire, there’s a vulnerable centre hidden beneath the metal and sharp. She’s no good at expressing herself with words, but her music choices reflect what’s going on inside.

So, to get to know her better, here’s the soundtrack to the book.

Sometimes I reference the band but not the song, so here are the ACTUAL songs she was listening to.

Page 8: Ily’s listening to The Smiths as Jared walks through the school grounds.

Actual song blasting through her headphones: This Charming Man

Page 16: Ily’s wearing a Velvet Underground T-shirt:

There’s no particular song on her t-shirt, but here’s a song to represent The Build-Up Season vibe:

Page 47: Ily is mocking the Kumbaya My Lord tune, a song she attributes to Eve. To be fair, it’s pretty ridiculous –

Page 80: 

Sufjan Stevens – Drawn to the Blood – this album ‘Carrie and Lowell’ is my favourite of 2015 and I listened to it incessantly while I was writing the first draft. It’s delicate and dreamy and powerful and heartbreaking.

The Zombies ‘Time of the Season’. I imagine Jared introducing this classic tune to Ily –

Loon Lake is one of the best Australian bands of recent times. This is just one of their gems, ‘Fantastica’ but please discover them if you haven’t already and get their tunes into your ears pronto –

Page 104: Max is tapping rap tunes on his legs. This here is what he’s tapping, this powerful, brilliant, political song by A.B. Original. They’re amazing (also, Australia, what the hell is wrong with us? Change the damned date of Australia Day. Can we maybe celebrate this incredible country on any day except January 26, the day which historically marks the invasion and subsequent shameful massacres and subjugation of our first peoples?) –

Page 217: Ily cranks The Ramones. She’s listening to Blitzkrieg Bop –

Page 260: Enya, Eve loves her –

Finally, I was obsessed with Lorde while writing this book. I stumbled across Royals and Tennis Court, and the energy Lorde displayed in these music videos perfectly mirrored how I felt Ily to be as she lived inside me, banging on my bones and demanding that I tell her story. In these clips she seems simultaneously defiant but also vulnerable; aggressive but also guarded; fierce but also scared. These clips are so powerful and complex and I was utterly fascinated.

While writing The Build-Up Season, whenever I was stuck, whenever I was unsure of how to channel Ily in a particular scene, I’d play these two clips on repeat, and I’d try to channel the same vibe and energy in my writing.

Do you listen to music to try to capture the mood of a character or scene? Or do you have a specific song in your head when you mention a band in passing in your stories? Let me know in the comments below!

x m

The Build-Up Season comes out on Monday, so I’m getting ready for the publicity machine to crank up, and the best bit – meeting readers and hearing their thoughts. It’s such a giant honour.

On Thursday August 3, from 6pm (for a 6.30pm start), I’m having a Book Launch at Kinokuniya in Sydney, which is the most beautiful bookstore. Seriously, cram all this beauty into your eyeballs –

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My childhood hero, Melina Marchetta, has not only lent me her lovely words to use as a cover blurb for The Build-Up Season, but she’s launching the book as well. If you’d told my childhood self this as I was reading and loving Looking for Alibrandi, I may have suffered spontaneous combustion due to excessive excitement. Thankfully that didn’t happen and I’m not just a pile of charred remains. There will be a reading from my kinda-cousin and old dear friend Shari Sebbens, because she performs for a living and I hide behind a computer screen, so she will do a far better job than me.

It’s an open event and all and sundry are welcome, there will even be cheese, wine and secret The Build-Up Season show bags – here are the event details – https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/the-build-up-season-book-launch-tickets-36091120513

From August 9 – 14 I’ll be in my old hometown Darwin, and I’ll be attending some events there – I’d love to see some Territory faces. I’ll be talking a little bit about my book, answering questions and signing copies (which The Bookshop Darwin will provide for sale). You can catch me at –

Casuarina Library – Thursday 10th August from 10am – 11am

Darwin High School – Friday 11th August from 9am

Palmerston Library – Friday 11th August from 6pm

The Bookshop Darwin – Saturday 12 August from 11am

I’ll be in Hobart from August 17 – 21 to attend the CBCA Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards, and then I’ll be mooching around and exploring the beautiful city. I’ll be sure to pop into some local bookstores and sign some copies.

Then I’ll be in Melbourne from August 26 – 28 to attend the Sisters in Crime 17th Annual Davitt Awards. I’ll be popping into bookstores and hopefully I’ll organise a YA book meet. I’ll keep you posted!

So, a really busy month ahead. I’m especially looking forward to my launch, because the launch for Yellow was one of the best nights of my life. See photos below for proof :

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With my cuzzie Shari, my agent Tara Wynne (from Curtis Brown Literary Agency), a ridiculously happy me holding my book baby, the glorious Melina Marchetta, and Penguin Random House Young Readers Publishing Director, Laura Harris.

Hope to see you around!

x Megan

Here’s an article in the SMH’s Good Weekend section ‘The Two of Us’ that featured my cuzzy Shari Sebbens and I last year. It was written by the lovely and brilliant Rosamund Burton, and it encapsulates our friendship pretty perfectly. Little Darwin girls who dream big.

Link to PDF version here: Two_of_Us_Megan_Jacobson_and_Shari_Sebbens

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I’ve finally been given the cover for my second book The Build-Up Season.

Love doesn’t even come close.

Here it is –

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It’s out August 2017, and this is the blurb –

“Seventeen-year-old Iliad Piper – Ily for short – is named after war and angry at the world. Growing up with a violent father and abused mother, she doesn’t know how to do relationships, family or friends. Her love-hate friendship with Max turns into a prank war and she nearly destroys her first true friendship with misfit Mia. She takes off her armour for nobody, until she meets Jared, a local actor and someone who’s as complicated as she is.

From the author of Yellow comes a powerful exploration of family and identity set against the humid build-up to the wet season in Darwin.”

I grew up in Darwin and I love the way the pinks and yellows and purples in the cover perfectly reflects the top end sunsets. I love the defiant posture of Iliad alone on the park bench. I love the gritty messiness of the ink. I love the lightning and the rain that signifies the Northern Territory tropical storms, and all the metaphorical resonance that comes with that.

Most of all, I can’t wait for people to read the book, then they’ll see how this cover encapsulates the story.

I love it, and I hope audiences will love Iliad and her world as much as I do.

x m

Seriously, how good is Pinterest? And google? Remember the olden days, when you had to buy and scour through art and photography magazines to find images that made you feel?  (So umm, I may be revealing my age here, but in those wobbly, early days of dial-up interwebs I’d rush to newsagents every month to get my hands on the latest Oyster, Russh and Frankie magazines, and some of those glossy pages would hit me like fists in the corneas. They made me feel like they were a passport to somewhere other than the confines of my town.)

I think in pictures. Sort of. I get an image in my head and then try to find the words to match what I can see when my eyes are closed. But then it’s not entirely that either, I mean, it’d be the world’s most boring piece of writing if you tried to describe *everything* in a photograph or a painting. The thing is, some pictures just make you feel, and when I’m inspired by a picture I try to put the right words together so that, when done correctly, they make me *feel* the same way that the picture makes me feel. If that makes sense?

After I’ve got the embryo of a story in my head, but before I pour the words onto a page, I look for images. This is part procrastination but mostly inspiration (or so I tell myself). These days, instead of cutting out magazine pictures and sticking them on my bedroom wall I make the story a Pinterst Board, because then I can take the pictures with me wherever I have an internet connection. Sometimes I choose pictures that remind me of the setting, or maybe what the characters look like, but it’s not just the physicality of things. A lot of times, I’m looking for pictures that I think the protagonist would like, or colours and images that would resonate with the protagonist, or would reflect the way they feel. The Pinterest Board I made for Yellow is very pastel and dreamy and whisper soft, along with grittier and darker undercurrents. After making the board, I felt like I knew Kirra a little bit more, and it was only then that I felt like she could speak to me properly. The second book I’m working on has an angrier energy, and whenever I’m unsure of her voice, I look at the pictures I’ve pinned, and then I can hear her again.

I know quite a few people use music in a similar way, and don’t get me wrong, each story I write has a sound-track too, but sometimes lyrics in songs mess with the words in my head when I’m trying to type, so when I’m trying to keep hold of the right tone, I prefer pictures.

Does anyone else do this, or do you use another technique?